


Naiad

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, CPR, Drowning, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:52:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're hunting a water spirit. The water spirit is hunting Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Naiad

* * *

   
The naiad has him by the ankle. Her smile still seems sweet when she tugs, reaches one hand firmly around Sam's knee just above the knee cap, the other's sickly pale fingers never leaving the ankle at all. She holds so hard - the surface seems to float further away from Sam, and even though he's holding his breath as hard as he can, a flow of bubbles still charges out of his nostrils. It's too dark and the pond is too deep. Dean was running when he last heard anything through the wall of the water (anything that wasn't his brother yelling for him: he can still hear it, even though it's fading softly like everything else seems to be), just crossing the dark dense wall of trees hanging heavy above the black, silent pool of water.

_Mine now, beautiful one. Mine forever._

Sam kicks down. It's a mistake; the naiad's now giggling warmly, and he's letting out more air. He follows the bubbles feeling the pressure inside his head grow firmer. It's not the only thing; his chest is constricting, twitching, bending down enough to hurt his ribs and his sternum. He can't draw in the water, because if he does, it's over for him. His body is burning with the need and his eyes seem to bulge and his lips press together so hard the inner sides are going numb, but it's all translating to him through a thick veil like fog. Inside his head, it's oddly clear and calm - there aren't many potential outcomes here, just enough to make it interesting. Either he holds his breath long enough for Dean to grab a hold of him and Dean swims fast enough to make it before the naiad's hidden him with the rest of the bodies, or... one of them fails, maybe both. He remembers this clarity from before. He's been through so many near-death situations that this one just feels familiar. Like maybe it's his time now, finally, to die. He's almost alright with it. The surface is gone and everything he sees now is just flashing lights and stars raining through his vision and cracks in the fireworks where he can just make apart the dark particles floating in the murky water. The panic is there, but it's not _his_ panic. Not yet.

It'll come, too.

His lips part and he gags. Some water flows in and then, suddenly, the panic floods over him. His lungs contract, and he knows it before it happens, feels like it all moves in slow motion: the naiad holds his leg. He's breathing in the water. It spirals down his throat like it never touched his tongue and his heart is racing so hard it's about to break out, his eyes fly wide open again but he's not seeing anything, just black with the slightest glimmer of light like the memory of it only upon the form of a bubble falling behind him, above him. Without it, he wouldn't know where the surface is.

It's over.

 

* * *

 

Dean struggles in the ice cold water. He can feel the bottom of it and he knows the naiad is gone by now, dissolved or evaporated or whatever it is that the water spirits do when they escape into their own realm. But Sam's still there. The... victims always stay behind. It's the souls the naiad wants, not the body. More than that, though, the naiad wants to survive. So it'll leave sooner this time, before it knows for certain, and Dean has a hopelessly small window of... self-deception, if nothing else. It's been three minutes since Sam last breathed in air. Three whole minutes, plus ten seconds or so. No one holds his breath that long. No one normal, anyway. They don't specialise in underwater anything. They've never really practiced holding breath after they were kids - they did it for fun like any kid would, trying to decide which of them was the superior brother, even though Dean always won simply because he was older and had bigger lungs to show for it. But sometimes, Dad would make them do it too. He'd hunted water spirits. He _knew._

One more trip to the surface. Dean can't feel his fingertips but somehow, his fingertips feel the water and his surroundings. Based on his own perception, he doesn't have thighs anymore: his body disappears into the black water from waist down and the only parts of his legs that he feels are his shins and, toes excluded, his feet. He fills himself with air and throws himself head first into the ice bath again. This time, he'll make it to the bottom.

Gravity doesn't help him. Not with his lungs filled like he's swallowed an entire pool noodle before going under the surface. He lets the air out one breath at a time, diving deeper like a madman, praying that his hands will somehow turn more solid against the flow of water as he descends so that he could go deeper faster. The water rejects him, pushes him up and away from its embrace, but _Sam_ is there somewhere, and Dean's not leaving him. His heart aches in his chest as he fights against the draw around his body, and in a desperate last measure, he empties his lungs and dives in deeper. No air, no pull. He's sinking.

The bottom is full of slimy rotten leaves and wood. A hundred years worth of grime greets Dean's fingers as he digs into it, patting and shoveling the leaves away with his palms, desperately trying to look for something solid. His heart skips a beat and he feels like he's swallowed it when he finds the first body. It's... cold, and firm, but not firm like it should be, not like flesh, not like _living_ flesh anyway - it's rigor mortis under water, just about to blow up and rise to the surface.

 _The vic,_ his brain feeds him helpfully.

Is that fucking so.

He pushes aside Louis Morgan's body, and he's already feeling the burn for air in his chest. He grabs onto the slimy bottom of the pond and drags himself blindly forwards, looking for something, until he - God, he feels his brother. Warm, soft to touch. Unmoving. In the bottom of a fucking pond. And then he doesn't feel anything anymore, nothing but the weight and feel of Sam against his chest, the flow of water as he pounces up from the bottom, and the endless slide as they move together towards the surface. Sam's heavy, limp, head resting over Dean's shoulder, and when the moonlight hits them so close to surface, his lips are parted and his face is pale like a corpse's. His eyes are closed, at least; he lost consciousness before drowning.

(He hasn't drowned.)

Dean pulls him out of the lake and onto the shore, over the rounded stones and onto the small bank above. He presses his chest, both hands over his sternum, and water flows out of Sam's mouth (and his nostrils). He presses again, and more water comes out. He presses again, and it's just a trickle, but Sam's not breathing. Sam's not doing anything. Dean's head feels light - he barely has air for himself, but he doesn't question bending down and pressing his lips over Sam's. He pushes and blows. Pushes and blows. Pushes and...

The night around them is dead still and silent, if not for the wind rustling the treetops above, but Dean's almost certain he can hear the naiad giggling quietly on the stones across the shore. He pulls up to breathe - he's no good to Sam if he faints - but there's a need much stronger than that for air, and it's for hearing his brother draw in air again, for any sign of life in his still, limp body.

"Come on, little brother, come on..."

He remembers this from before. The CPR practice with Dad, before school and the creepy dolls got to them. Sam crying, because the last thing he wanted was his brother's mouth on his own. Dean sulking, because the last thing he wanted was his brother's mouth on his own. Sam screaming and pulling out and running out of the room every time they tried to get it done. Dad yelling.

They'd had a golden childhood.

But now Sam isn't moving. Dean pushes at his chest harder, risking broken bones, to make sure there's no more water in there blocking the system. He tilts Sam's head a little bit more, then breathes into his mouth again. A dry sob breaks his rhythm. He tries again. And again. He gets halfway through with the third attempt before breaking down and pulling Sam up from the ground, holding him close, cradling him, pressing him against his own body and rocking back and forth with him, soundless, unable to breathe, eyes so firmly closed that he's seeing stars again from the sheer pressure. A single tear manages through it all, and with that, he lets Sam down on the ground again - perhaps too fast, and maybe his head does hit the ground harder than he'd intended, but he can't care, doesn't have the capacity for that anymore - and he resumes the CPR. A breath of life, 30 pushes. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and...

It's... not a gasp, really. It's more like a sigh, something opening up. But Dean hears it like it's the thunder splitting the sky open in two blistering halves. He barely has the time to react, and he's already coming down over Sam again, but then there's a cough with a rain of droplets over Dean's face. The next breath is a sickly rasp, a deep, hungry lunge for air, a shudder; after it comes more coughs, hacking, rasping, wet coughs. Sam's too weak to climb up, so Dean's doing it for him: he holds his little brother against himself firmly but afraid to hold on too tight, trying to give him the space to breathe, and warmth floods into him with relief like a thick blanket, taking away the chill of the wet clothes that he's barely noticed and the coolness of the early autumn air. He feels Sam's fingers grip at his shirt and he dares to hold on a little tighter, trying his best to provide Sam something familiar to come to, something like bedrock that he can trust even as the disorientation fades with each breath drawing in more oxygen into his deprived bloodstream.

They stay like that for a good long while, and before it's over, Sam grows heavy in Dean's arms again.

 

* * *

 

The Impala rocks along the rain-ravaged road like a wagon with steel springs. Sam pulls the blanket tighter around him, eyes staring idly at the illuminated dry expanse of dirt ahead of them. He feels Dean's gaze upon him more often than the road would allow, and maybe that's the reason they hit the deepest pits with too much speed and weight, but the older brother barely curses whenever it happens, as if any damage the car will suffer is secondary in his mind.

The whole car smells not of leather tonight, but of rotting leaves and greenish-brown thick water, like the smell of a ditch but grander, deeper, more penetrating. Sam reeks of it, but Dean's hands are the worst: his nails are pitch black underneath, and the filth has marked the whole length of his arms, too. The radio isn't on. The wheels grind the dry earth underneath them monotonously for a long while more before they finally hit the paved road and turn left.

The question comes inevitably, and Sam welcomes it.

"How're you feeling?" Dean voices the essential.

Sam relays the question to his body. He's aching. His lungs are aching. His throat is raw. His nostrils are burning. His eyes are full of that water still, feeling dry like there's dirt inside them every time he blinks. He's lightheaded and feels as if his soul has partially departed already, hanging by a thread somewhere beside his right shoulder. He shrugs and smiles a little.

"Alive," he confesses and glances at his brother's direction, not quite far enough to see him.

"Fuck, Sam..."

"I know."

And he does, in a way. He knows he was out for a long time. He knows Dean dragged him up from the bottom and watched the warm water squirt out of his body and run along his cheeks to the wet ground underneath him. He knows he was lifeless, gone, when Dean started reviving him. He knows too much, knows because he's been in Dean's shoes too many times, the one kneeling beside an empty vessel praying for a miracle.

He's quite naked underneath the blanket. He feels that way, too. Exposed. Raw. Like a newborn after the amniotic fluid has washed away. It makes him smile, oddly enough; he takes a long breath and turns towards Dean, chuckles.

"Remember when I -" he begins, recalling the failed CPR practice in that one motel room, the fight with Dad, Dean like a shadow by the doorway, the salty taste of tears and snot on their lips when there's no other choice but to go through with it.

Dean smirks. Sam doesn't need to finish.  
"Yeah, I remember," he says and turns on the radio.


End file.
